Good Riddence News Papers

For awhile there has been doom and gloom surrounding the future of city news papers. Well recently it just happened. No seriously it did. Ann Arbor Mitchigan is the first decently sized city to loose their news paper.

I think there is supposed to be some sort of reaction about this. Something akin to shock, horror, the tut tuting of anti intellectualism, and blah blah blah. But fuck all that shit. I don't know about many local news papers but I know that if it is ANYTHING like the pensacola news journal that it is time that it dies the death it so richly deserves. There was a time where news papers used to be worth something. There is also no reason why the current news paper couldn't be worth something. People are switching more to alternative news sources, people like Rush, Beck, O'Reilley are getting more coverage than they ever have in the past and it isn't because of their media stunts. NO it is because there is a huge, HUGE segment of society that want to know more. They want to understand the world around them and hey lets face it murders and bullshit aren't doing it anymore.

Murderers and bullshit. Man that is what the news paper mostly is now. See here is the thing. There are 3 major 24 hour news networks. These networks get by on anything from 6 to 4 hours worth of programming. They also fail to go in depth in any real meaningful way on any topic. This is a void that news papers could be filling. They could also be dispencing, you know actual information. Instead of taking each murder one at a time they could compile weekly statistics showing where danger areas are and how to avoid them. There are tons and tons of things that can be done.

Instead of doing any of these things news papers are clinging to outdated ideas of what people want to read, and the way it needs to be presented to them. As a result they are in a bind. Not because tv is doing a better job, or because bloggers are taking over. No fuck that. It is because they failed utterly at moving with the times.

I got into this argument once with my journalism teacher in highschool. It wasn't that I couldn't get the inverted pyramid right it was that she and I disagreed on what contituted an important fact. She liked me, she realized I was a good writter and that I wasn't afraid to stand up to her at all. But damn did we disagree on execution. Did we ever. Now her way is failing. Human interest stories aren't that interesting and blood is no longer selling. So oh well your papers are dying? Adapt or perish.

This goes back to something I said regarding the fate of small locally owned stores vs Mega marts. Small local store owners, lock up at 5pm clean up, are home by 6, and they complain mercilessly about how walmart is eating their business up. Well news flash assholes no one likes shopping at walmart. NO ONE. They do it out of nessesity because all the little locally owned stores close at 5 when we are getting off work.